The quiet achiever - The West Australian, 12/13/2005
Taking directions from teenagers - Newsday, 03/25/2004
Valley stars - The Poughkeepsie Journal, 08/03/2003
Program unlocks creative energy - The Poughkeepsie Journal, 03/20/2002
LOW-KEY STRATHAIRN TO GET ACTING AWARD IN S.J. - San Jose Mercury News, 02/28/2002
RIDING THE 'BLUE CAR' TO DAYTON: David Strathairn brings talent, experience to independent film - Dayton Daily News, 06/24/2001
Actor takes cue from kids - The Poughkeepsie Journal, 03/22/2000
Stars swap celluloid for footlights - The Poughkeepsie Journal, 06/25/1999
Day school dads do their bit - The Poughkeepsie Journal, 06/04/1999
Actors lend talent to day school - The Poughkeepsie Journal, 05/25/1999
Play Time: David Strathairn Shuttles Between Stage and Screen, But the Veteran Actor Prefers the Theater--So Much So That He Happily Endured a Hectic Schedule to Star In a Production Opening Here This Week - The Philadelphia Inquirer, 04/28/1999
Fresh Look At Custer Legend: New TV miniseries tries for a 'balanced and accurate' view - St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 02/03/1991

For more quotes from or about David Strathairn, please also see this site's other Movie/TV/Theater Interview pages.



The quiet achiever
The West Australian
December 13, 2005
By Matt Naglazas

David Strathairn is an Oscar frontrunner for his role in Good Night, and Good Luck. But for most of us he might well be a spear carrier in a community theatre production. Mark Naglazas meets America's least-known great actor.

Whenever I am granted an audience with a Hollywood star I'm never quite sure if I should shake their hand, drop to bended knee or pucker up in readiness to kiss their powdered, perfumed and surgically enhanced derriere.

There's no protocol for dealing with American actors, who almost invariably come across as down-to-earth (appearing "normal" to the media and fans is a movie star's most important performance). But journalists ignore the celebrity/plebian class divide at their own peril. So it was an entirely pleasant surprise to have David Strathairn, who plays the legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow in George Clooney's justly celebrated McCarthy-era drama Good Night, and Good Luck, almost grateful for my presence at Sydney's fancy Quay Grand Hotel, especially when I let drop that I was from Perth.

"You travelled all that way for an interview? Wow!" says Strathairn as he pumped my hand with all the warmth and enthusiasm of a man who had spent a lifetime on a desert island and I was leading the rescue party.

Which, in terms of the celebrity geography and the Hollywood pecking order, is exactly where Strathairn has been stranded for most of his 25-year career.

Despite being regarded as one of America's finest actors, with a string of beautifully nuanced performances in well-regarded movies (most notably in the films of John Sayles), Strathairn has never had a leading role before his stunning turn as the rock-like Murrow in Clooney's immaculately crafted docu-drama about a key moment in journalism history.

"I've had fairly substantial parts in independent movies but I've never had my name above the title," says the wiry 56-year-old actor, whose darkish complexion is traced to his mixed Scots-Hawaiian heritage. "They call us 'the lunchpail actors', guys who just clock in and get the job done."

Even now, after collecting the best actor prize at the Venice Film Festival and when he is almost a certainty to receive an Oscar nomination, the modest-to-a-fault Strathairn shies away from being called the star of Good Night, and Good Luck. "It's really an ensemble piece," he explains. "It's just that Murrow gets all the good lines."

Good lines! Great lines, I say. Co-writer and director George Clooney has supplied some tasty dialogue but it is the words of Murrow, whose on-screen confrontation with anti-communist crusader Joseph McCarthy is considered a high watermark in the history of journalism, that Strathairn had the privilege of enunciating.

"He was so clean and articulate and poetic," says Strathairn. "He was very literate--he would quote Shakespeare--but at the same time true to the point. He had the skill to tell a story and get across the resonances of it."

Strathairn is not old enough to remember Edward Murrow and the stand he took against Senator McCarthy, whose campaign to root out communist infiltration in America destroyed many lives. But the trauma of that period has clearly left a scar on the consciousness of an actor who, through his long association with leading left-wing filmmaker Sayles, has never been shy about expressing his political position.

"The actions of those actors, writers and directors who buckled under pressure from McCarthy are reprehensible. No, I would not have 'named names'," says Strathairn with a Murrow-like quiet force that sends a chill up the spine. "Freedom of thought and speech is essential to the survival of a democracy. People have to take a stand, which is why George should be lauded for making this film," he continues.

At one point Clooney himself was considering playing Murrow. However, his duties as producer, co-writer (with Grant Heslov) and director of the movie prompted the superstar to step into the lesser but crucial role of Fred Friendly, Murrow's co-producer on the legendary news program See it Now.

But the physical resemblance between Strathairn and Murrow is so striking he seems the only choice to play a man well known to millions of older Americans and who is such a towering figure in the history of journalism.

"Murrow is so public a figure that it was essential that we do some kind of respectful replica of the man. Then after reading about him and what he wrote I was able to get under his skin, to capture the essence of the man."

The famously composed, still quality of Murrow is also something that critics have noted about the approach of Strathairn, who made his screen debut in Sayles' Return of the Secaucus 7 in 1980 and received strong reviews for his work in Matewan, Eight Men Out, Passion Fish (all for Sayles) and mainstream studio pictures such as Sneakers and L.A. Confidential.

Sayles says that Strathairn, like his other perennial leading men Joe Morton and Chris Cooper, are actors who make you feel like something else is going on. "They may be asking one question on the surface but you know they've got a whole other agenda going on beneath that. And that very often makes for a more interesting performance," says Sayles.

Strathairn agrees that subtext is the word he would use to describe Murrow. "He had a very composed surface but that was just an illusion. On the inside there was a turbo churning away, constantly amassing and editing information, putting it through his own private filtration plant.

"The pressures were huge on these guys at this moment in history. If they had've failed they could have straddled the country with McCarthyism. So he was very cautious and precise in everything that he did."

One of the essential external details that the filmmakers had to get right was the chain-smoking of Murrow, who in Good Night, and Good Luck is shown constantly wraithed in the cigarette smoke. (He died of lung cancer two days after his 57th birthday in 1965.) "I think we all got an iron lung for a gift at the wrap party," jokes Strathairn. Strathairn calculates that the crew rolled between three and four thousand cigarettes to keep him and the other actors lit up during the shoot. "I'm not a smoker so it was pretty rough at first," he recalls.

"Smoking is something you really can't fake so I really had to draw it right back," says Strathairn, who sucks on and waves around those cancer sticks with such elegance that I'm surprised anti-smoking groups haven't been protesting outside cinemas.

"After lots of research we discovered that light pipe tobacco was the most crew-friendly solution."

While there is more smoke in Good Night, and Good Luck than any film since the heyday of Bogart and Bacall, the message of Clooney's remarkable movie is as cleanly and devastatingly enunciated as Murrow's now famous dissection of McCarthy, whose career ended soon after their on-screen battle.

"Murrow says dissent should never be confused with disloyalty and investigation should not be persecution. We cannot defend freedom abroad if we deny it at home."

Good Night, and Good Luck opens on Thursday.



Taking direction from teenagers
Newsday
March 25, 2004
By Gordon Cox

The actor David Strathairn has appeared on Broadway (Salome), Off-Broadway (The Winter's Tale at Classic Stage), in films (Blue Car) and on television (the 2002 remake of Lathe of Heaven). And he recently found himself under the direction of a 17-year-old tyro named Aime Kelly.

She had strong opinions about where he should look during a seductive moment he was playing with actress Melissa Friedman. "They weren't shy," Strathairn said of Kelly and the other teenagers who directed him. "It was lively. They kind of solved, or gave us other insights, in negotiating a couple of our scenes."

It's all part of the extensive arts-education component of Hannah and Martin, the latest production from Epic Theatre Center. Stars Strathairn and Friedman recently rehearsed in front of 11th-graders from the arts-oriented Upper East Side high school Talent Unlimited.

"The students acted as on-site assistant directors, and we discussed how staging affects an understanding of the play," explained Ron Russell, the director of Hannah and Martin. He is also a co-founder of Epic, and a teaching artist midway through a series of seven visits to Talent Unlimited.

Working with teachers, Russell incorporated the play about the relationship between political theorist Hannah Arendt and philosopher Martin Heidegger into the school's English and history curricula. After studying the script, the class attended Hannah and Martin on Tuesday, and over the next few weeks each student will write a one- act historical play about the tension between the personal and the public.

Talent Unlimited is one of several New York City schools visited by Epic, a 3-year-old troupe with a strong educational bent. The group also oversees performance-oriented studies of Greek classics with ninth-graders. It was recently selected to fill a faculty position at the new Bronx High School for Writing and Contemporary Arts, one of the educational projects co-funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

According to the students at Talent Unlimited, Hannah and Martin, which opens Wednesday at the Manhattan Ensemble Theater, helped put recognizable human faces on the generalizations of history. "We know the wars and all that, but we don't usually learn about the people," said Emma Bell, 17.

Many of the young artists at the school plan to pursue careers in the performing arts. Tina Moatalto, 16, found practical insight in the rehearsal session. "It's cool to see how everybody has a different way to learn their lines," she said.



Valley Stars
The Poughkeepsie Journal
August 3, 2003
By Rebecca Rothbaum

[ Excerpt from article: ]

Visitors often stay

Events such as the Woodstock Film Festival, with a board that includes Quinn and Hawke, has also helped raise the area's profile.

"Almost every festival, there are a couple of actors or festival-types who in their spare time drive around looking at houses," founder and director Meira Blaustein said. "Once, one was even late to a panel for that reason."

The festival, held annually in September, this year opens with a screening of independent filmmaker John Sayles' Casa De Los Babys at Upstate Films in Rhinebeck. Sayles and his longtime partner, Maggie Renzi, have owned a home in northern Dutchess County for years and were among the friends who introduced actor David Strathairn to the region.

Strathairn, who starred this Spring in Salome: The Reading, along with Al Pacino and Marisa Tomei and has appeared in numerous Sayles films, has lived in Clinton Corners with his wife and two sons for a decade. Originally from northern California, Strathairn said the valley won him over with the sheer beauty of its landscape and strong conservation movement.

"It still has a real sort of small-town feeling that is a great antidote to the big cities," he said. "There's a quality of life here, with a lot of organic farms and (food) co-ops."



Program unlocks creative energy
The Poughkeepsie Journal
March 20, 2002
By Nicole Edwards

Cathy Stokes, a sixth-grade teacher at Rombout Middle School, has recently found she has to limit the length of her students' writing assignments.

"They want to go on and on," Stokes said. "They enjoy writing now. It's not a laborious process now."

She's noticed the changes since students at the Beacon school began participating in this year's Young Playwrights Festival. The writing-in-residency program began seven years ago with the support of a grant from the Berilla Kerr Foundation.

Tuesday morning, students from Poughkeepsie Middle School and Rombout Middle School gathered at the Bardavon 1869 Opera House in Poughkeepsie to fine-tune their writing and record their monologue, The Principal's Announcements. The students have been learning to express themselves and generate details in their writing during the 20-week program with help from playwright and writer-in-residence Casey Kurtti.

"It instills, I think, an incredible sense of resilience, determination and just knowing that their voice is essential to what they are going through," Kurtti said.

Dancing with The Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall and a script adaptation about a Juilliard student coping with Sept. 11 are among the topics students have written about.

"Before I started writing, I thought it was hard," said Vinnie Campbell, one of four students from Poughkeepsie Middle School who worked on Emotional Rescue. "But once I started doing it, it got easier and easier."

Students continue to tweak their plays for April 26, when the monologue and their short plays will be performed at the Bardavon by professional actors.

One unique aspect of the production is the students collaborating with actor David Strathairn on the monologue.

"It's a challenge to try to figure out what they really want," Strathairn said after re-reading and recording The Principal's Announcements at the Bardavon Tuesday morning. "It's always been fun."

Strathairn, who lives in Dutchess County, has participated in the program for four years.

Gives kids confidence

"This is where the love of creative writing starts getting kids confident and excited and encouraged and getting creative in thinking and feeling good about expressing themselves," said Strathairn, who stars in the film Harrison's Flowers with Andie MacDowell. "Programs like this for young people are so important to make kids feel that they can actually make a difference through the creative arts."

Both students and teachers can benefit from the learning process.

"Even though it seems like you're giving up a lot of 'teaching time,' they're really learning through an alternative method," said Blanche Bergman, a sixth-grade language arts and social studies teacher at Poughkeepsie Middle School. "In turn, I think it winds up being more effective than any classroom lesson."

While Travis Dinan has found working on a play he wrote titled The Life of Me has improved his writing, his play is also allowing people to see details of his life at age 11.

"It's about a boy whose friends want to play man-hunt with him, but he isn't feeling well," said Travis, a student at Poughkeepsie Middle School who lives with cystic fibrosis. "Well, I'm really trying to let people know that even though you have a disease, it doesn't stop you from doing special things."



LOW-KEY STRATHAIRN TO GET ACTING AWARD IN S.J.
San Jose Mercury News
February 28, 2002
By Glenn Lovell

David Strathairn has had it both ways. The star of The River Wild, Matewan and other dark adventures has been on locations with star perks and on locations with none at all. He prefers to rough it, he says, because this allows him to concentrate on why he's there in the first place: the script.

"When you're doing a big movie like River Wild you get a lot of side orders you don't get on a John Sayles film," acknowledges Strathairn, 53, scheduled to collect a Maverick Spirit Award on Saturday from San Jose Cinequest Film Festival. "With Sayles, it's all about the work. The accouterments are extraneous, they just cause a production pain."

Indie efforts

Strathairn, who often sports a gray-flecked beard, has done seven films with New Jersey independent Sayles, including Matewan, Passion Fish and Eight Men Out. They've developed "a sort of shorthand" that saves time. His flashier studio credits: Silkwood, Dolores Claiborne and L.A.Confidential. At Sundance Film Festival, he turned heads in Blue Car, an indie winner in which he plays an English teacher who mentors, then betrays, a gifted student.

He allows that he mostly operates "outside the normal parameters," but Strathairn isn't averse to studio attention.

"It's tough to crash the party, the big party," he says. "Yeah, I hope they would consider me for character parts. You have to always reinvent yourself, show people that what you did the last time is not the only thing you can do."

Strathairn's specialty: weak-kneed husbands and two-faced company men. He agrees he's been typed, to a certain degree, as lowdowns and scoundrels.

"That's true, yeah," he says, laughing. "Maybe it's a case of, 'He was a scoundrel in that one, he can be a scoundrel in this one.' I see these characters as catalysts. And I only choose to do them if they are an integral part of the plot and other characters' journeys. The abusive husband in Dolores Claiborne was a very difficult role to play and, in my opinion, not altogether successful. But I feel it was necessary for the other characters to have that character, who was pretty low."

Slim virtues

The key to playing broken and underhanded, Strathairn says, is to concentrate on your character's virtues, no matter how slim. Mr. Auster, his teacher in Blue Car, is a case in point.

Strathairn was originally going to introduce Blue Car at Cinequest, but the film was pulled at the last minute by its distributor. The New York-based actor now will be seen in Doug Magee's Beyond the Call, co-starring Sissy Spacek. It will be preceded by a Magee's short The Victim.

"In Beyond the Call, I play a Vietnam veteran who is condemned to death for shooting a policeman in Louisiana. It's sort of an investigation of post-traumatic stress disorder and the death penalty."

Surprisingly, Strathairn is outspoken about his co-star's latest choice, the Oscar-nominated drama In the Bedroom.

"It left me cold and disturbed," he says. "I don't understand why that movie is getting the high beams. I kept asking, 'Why didn't the people talk to each other? Why wasn't there some kind of intervention in that town?'

"I have heard people say no matter what walk of life you're from you are still vulnerable to dark and evil deeds. To me, In the Bedroom seems like sanctioning some kind of vigilante thing."

Memo:
An Evening With DavidStrathairn
With screening of Blue Car
Presented by: Cinequest San Jose Film Festival
Where: San Jose Repertory Theater, 101 Paseo de San Antonio
When: 8 p.m. Friday
Tickets: $15



RIDING THE BLUE CAR TO DAYTON: David Strathairn brings talent, experience to independent film
Dayton Daily News
June 24, 2001
By Dave Larsen

David Strathairn is no stranger to the Buckeye State. The gifted screen and stage actor, who spent seven days in Dayton over the past two weeks shooting the independent film Blue Car, previously filmed Eight Men Out and Lost in Yonkers in Cincinnati. His first professional acting job was at a summer theater festival at Kenyon College in Gambier, where he earned his Actors Equity card.

"I always have a great time in Ohio," Strathairn said. "And the thunderstorms haven't changed. They're still as dramatic as ever."

Strathairn, whose credits also include such films as L.A. Confidential, The River Wild, A League of Their Own and Dolores Claiborne, didn't get to see much of Dayton because of Blue Car's tight schedule and 12-hour shooting days. The low-budget film, written and directed by Karen Moncrieff, shot here from May 29 through last Monday.

Strathairn, a San Francisco native who lives near New York City, noted Dayton's wide streets and quiet nature. "Compared to New York, I guess anything would be quiet," he said, during a break from shooting a classroom scene at Col. White High School.

Blue Car is a coming-of-age drama about a young woman, Meg Denning, played by newcomer Agnes Bruckner, who comes to terms with her father's abandonment through her gift for poetry. Strathairn co-stars as Mr. Auster, a high school Advanced Placement English teacher who nurtures Meg's talent. She in turn rekindles his creative passion.

"She's a very attractive young woman, so there's that equation, too," Strathairn said.

Moncrieff wrote the role with Strathairn in mind.

"I think he's an actor who's not afraid of playing characters that other people would say are unsympathetic," Moncrieff said. "But he also has a tremendous amount of charisma and he infuses all of his characters with such humanity and sympathy that you can't help but understand them, even if they're as evil as the man he played in Dolores Claiborne."

Strathairn said that Auster may be construed in the end as being unsympathetic, but that's the risk of the script.

"As an actor you try to find as many facets to the guy to make him as potentially redeemable in a realistic human scale as possible," he explained. "Certain events may tip the audience's appreciation of that one way or the other.

"In terms of Megan Denning's journey, certain things happen that might derail the audience's sympathy for him. But the attempt is to make him not a predator, but also a vulnerable and complicated and fallible person who just happens to maybe make the wrong choices at the wrong time."

Strathairn, 52, graduated from Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. His first film was The Return of the Secaucus Seven, the 1979 directorial debut of college classmate John Sayles. The actor has since starred in seven movies for the acclaimed independent filmmaker, including Eight Men Out, City of Hope, Passion Fish and Limbo.

"It's been a great relationship in terms of the work," Strathairn said. "It seems like I only really see him if I'm working on a film with him, because he's always somewhere else doing a film." Strathairn said that he loves the way Sayles tells a story.

"I think he's a wonderful narrative artist. And as far as character, it's so accessible. He does such wonderful gestalt to any kind of community that he writes about. You really know your place in the story in terms of his tapestry of characters. That's his genius, is doing a real cross-section of a community."

Strathairn also attended Ringling Bros. Clown College in Florida and spent a year on the road with the circus.

"It really wasn't about being a clown," he said. "It's more like being circus fodder with makeup on. I realized it would be a long time to crash the party to become a circus clown."

Did he learn anything about physical performance as a clown that he could apply to his acting career?

"I always try to fall down in every production just as homage to the slapstick geniuses," Strathairn replied, with a wry smile.

The actor's credits also include the recent television movie The Miracle Worker and the short-lived series Big Apple. For the most part, Strathairn divides his time between independent films and stage roles, with the occasional big-budget feature.

"I like the balance between independent (films) like this and theater," he said. "That's sort of now where I've been pigeonholed."

Strathairn said that the chief difference between an indie film such as Blue Car and a big feature is the size of the budget. The latter sort is basically the same thing on a much larger scale.

"This film has all the characteristics of an earnest low-budget film," he said.

While in Dayton, Strathairn had dinner at Jay's Restaurant, enjoyed barbecue ribs from a sidewalk vendor in the Oregon District and watched an NBA Championship game at a Kettering sports bar, where he was recognized by some patrons.

"They weren't sure if I was the person they thought I was, and so they asked."

Strathairn said that the community seemed very supportive of the production. He recalled how one area resident not only allowed her home to be used as a film location on short notice, but also offered to make the crew lemonade.

Production sources said that Strathairn signed over his per diem every day to buy fruit and salad for the crew. He also contributed money toward lunch on the last day of shooting and beer for the wrap party. He graciously posed for photos with local extras.

Strathairn was disappointed that his shooting schedule would not allow him to attend last weekend's Cityfolk Festival. However, he was visited on Father's Day by his wife and two sons, ages 20 and 14, who drove from New York.

"I like to bring them if possible to see places that they wouldn't go," Strathairn said. "This is a very significant part of American culture."

He hopes that Blue Car is successful, calling it a small film with wonderful resonances.

"In terms of teaching literature and poetry to anyone, that's a huge challenge," Strathairn said. "And then to do a film about it and get people to appreciate it is yet again a huge challenge. But I hope (Moncrieff) is successful with it and that it leads to other things for her. I think she's written a very sincere and very relevant story."



Actor takes cues from kids
The Poughkeepsie Journal
March 22, 2000
By Cindy Reiman

David Strathairn works well with established writers.

The actor is best known for his leading roles in films such as The River Wild, Dolores Claiborne and Simon Birch. Strathairn is one of writer/director John Sayles' favorite actors. (Sayles used him most recently in Limbo.)

Even with his celebrity, Strathairn had no problem taking cues from and reading lines for a group of local grade-school students on Tuesday.

"They know exactly what they want, so it's not difficult taking their direction," said Strathairn, an Ulster County resident.

Strathairn and staff members of Poughkeepsie's Bardavon 1869 Opera House spent the day fine-tuning one of the many works for this year's annual Young Playwrights Festival with students from Poughkeepsie Middle School and Beacon's Rombout Middle School.

"It's pretty exciting," Rebecca Hotaling, a sixth-grade Rombout Middle School student, said of her morning with classmates and Strathairn.

"You get to experience writing plays and learning how long it really takes."

New pieces debut

The piece, The Principal's Monologue, is comprised of fictional morning school announcements and was written by the students and read by Strathairn. That and 20 other student-written pieces will debut during the fifth annual festival, set for April 13 and 14 at the Bardavon.

"It's really rare to get something like this at grade-school level," said Strathairn, who has worked with the playwrights festival over the last few years. "To give them the excitement of having their words come alive is just so powerful."

Under the direction of Emmy Award-nominated writer and Ulster County resident Casey Kurtti, students spend 20 weeks preparing for their two live performances, learning all aspects of the creative process, from writing monologues and scripts to working with professional actors, dancers and musicians.

"Writing can be a negative thing for most kids, an arduous process filled with rules, but this allows them to love writing and make writing an incredible journey," Kurtti said.

Grant funds program

The program is founded with a grant from the Berrilla Kerr Foundation, a Manhattan-based group created by the late playwright Berrilla Kerr.

This year's show is presented in association with the Poughkeepsie and Beacon city school districts and sponsored by Rite-Aid and the Arts in Education program of the New York State Council on the Arts.

"I'm in such a state of responsibility with these kids, helping to represent them as writers and show that it's fundamentally important that their voices are heard," Kurtti said.

On the brightly lit Bardavon stage, students sat in a semi-circle around Strathairn, changing words to the actor's script and helping him with the flow of his monologue.

Moving their eyes from the actor to their paper drafts and back to Strathairn, the students took notes, crossed out lines and made final corrections before the actor read the finished product.

"It's all a wonderful opportunity to get students together to bring words and phrases to life," Strathairn said.

Even with many of his students missing their morning classes, Bob Watson sees the value in what the Bardavon festival offers participants.

"They are submerging these young people in a love of the English language through theater," said Watson, principal at Poughkeepsie Middle School.

"It's an opportunity to connect with a known actor," He said. "Learning about the complexity of putting a work together and watching it all come to life is so valuable. It's a practical application of the English language that helps kids become true thinkers."

Tuesday's session made Jessica Washington rethink her future career.

"I like acting and I want to be an actress but learning to write plays is just so exciting," said the sixth-grade Rombout Middle School student. "And hanging out with David is just the coolest."



Stars swap celluloid for footlights
The Poughkeepsie Journal
June 25, 1999
By Michelle Vellucci

Two movie stars trade the screen for the stage this weekend in a psychological thriller about the clash between business and religion.

David Strathairn and Kyra Sedgwick will join theater great Byron Jennings in a production of Yield of the Long Bond, a new play written and directed by Larry Atlas.

Yield is the first in a series of special presentations to be staged this summer at the Susan Stein Shiva Theater at Vassar College in the Town of Poughkeepsie. It's part of Vassar and New York Stage and Film's Powerhouse Theater season, a summer-long program that offers theater students a place to learn and professionals a place to try out new work. The play opens tonight at 8 and runs through Sunday.

Atlas' play tells the story of a corporate raider (Strathairn), his lover (Sedgwick) and a priest (Jennings).

"It's about business and religion--two pillars of our culture--and about the role of women in those still male-dominated institutions," Atlas said.

A Powerhouse veteran and resident of Clinton Corners, Strathairn's film credits include L.A. Confidential and The River Wild. He currently stars in the films A Midsummer Night's Dream and Limbo.

Strathairn described his character in Yield as "a self-made millionaire, a man who goes by the old adage: 'You don't play king, people just treat you as king.'

"He's a very successful player in the financial world, so much so that he glories in it," Strathairn continued. "Something that even as a young boy at age 11 he knew he had a gift for."

Sedgwick offered only a brief description of her character: "She's a corporate lawyer with a dual nature."

Sedgwick has appeared in films such as Phenomenon and Born on the Fourth of July, as well as the Showtime movie, Losing Chase, which was directed by her husband, actor Kevin Bacon. This fall, she'll start taping a TV sitcom for ABC called Talk to Me, about a radio talk show host in New York.

Lured back by script

Sedgwick, who performed a script-reading at Powerhouse in 1996 with Meryl Streep and Sam Waterston, said she was lured back to the Vassar campus by Atlas' play.

"I thought it was exceptional," she said. "It's wonderful to work with the actual playwright of a play, because...they can learn a lot from the actors about what they've written. Often (playwrights) reject that idea, but Larry wants to learn from what we can bring to it."

Atlas and Sedgwick first worked together several years ago when Sedgwick, then a teenager, was filming her first movie.

"She was wonderful," Atlas recalled, "even as a teenaged girl."

Sedgwick laughed as she recalled the difficult shoot, which took place in then-communist Poland at a concentration camp.

"I think he was more impressed with my stamina than with my acting ability," she said.

Sedgwick and Strathairn said that for actors, theater has certain advantages over the movies.

"Theater is so very alive and elusive it's in the moment and over after the moment," Strathairn said. "Film lives on, but the dynamic between the audience and what's happening on stage on a given evening is amazing. It feels like more of a communal experience going on."

Sedgwick agreed.

"The final product of theater is an ongoing discovery, whereas the final product of film is sort of one big catharsis when you watch it, and then it's over," she said.

"I'd say that theater's a hell of a lot more work, but I certainly enjoy the process."



Day school dads do their bit
The Poughkeepsie Journal
June 4, 1999
By Cindy Reiman

Unleashing two wannabe actor dads on the general public as part of a school fund-raiser might be a terrifying prospect.

That's not the case at Poughkeepsie Day School, where accomplished actors James Earl Jones and David Strathairn will perform a scene from John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men Saturday night outdoors on the school's Boardman Road campus in the Town of Poughkeepsie.

"When they're here, they are a part of this school, and we really feel they are part of our community," said school director Tony Buccelli.

Jones, whose 16-year-old son attends the independent school, is acclaimed for his work in feature films such as The Great White Hope and Field of Dreams (as well as being the voice of Darth Vader in the Star Wars movies) and many stage and television productions. He is also the commercial spokesman for Bell Atlantic.

Strathairn, whose 12-year-old son is also a day school student, has been featured in numerous plays on and off-Broadway and in feature films such as The River Wild, Simon Birch (both with Hyde Park's Joseph Mazzello) and L.A. Confidential. He will soon be seen in Limbo, the eighth John Sayles movie in which he has appeared.

Of Mice and Men is the story of George, an itinerant worker who looks after his mentally retarded cousin, Lenny, a giant who doesn't know his own strength. The Steinbeck novel became a play and then a 1939 movie starring Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr.

Act 1, Scene 1 was selected by Jones' wife, Ceci, an actress who is producing the performance. She chose it because the scene works with two actors, a minimum of crew and is easy to mount.

Strathairn plays George, Jones plays Lenny.

"It's an ideal piece for outdoors," Jones said last week after he and Strathairn blocked out the scene at the day school. "It is essentially a serious piece. And against this idyllic and beautiful setting, you'll have two human beings in deep, deep, deep trouble. And the character I'm playing is in the deepest trouble."

After running through the scene, Jones, exuberant and outgoing, and Strathairn, measured and more introspective, chatted in Buccelli's office. The sounds and voices of students, their sons among them, drifted in through the office door.

Strathairn, who has been appearing in the People's Light & Theater Company's production of Sally's Gone, She Left Her Name in a Philadelphia suburb, previously performed in Of Mice and Men, but this is his first time as George. He looks forward to appearing with his fellow actor and day school dad.

"I think it's important for my child to see that whatever talents or skills that he may eventually develop can be integrated into whatever community he ends up in. So then you're not separate. You're life is involved in a community," said Strathairn, who also participated in last year's Young Playwrights Festival at the Bardavon 1869 Opera House in Poughkeepsie.

"Hopefully, he'll remember to contribute in some fashion. It may just be making sure to vote and staying up on the issues. Or it may be more than that."

Jones has enjoyed the various productions Of Mice and Men he's seen over the years, but hasn't always agreed with the approach of actors who portray Lenny as a cuddly bear.

"He is a cuddly bear, but he's also deadly and dangerous," he said. "He's a very dangerous creature. I think he's already killed. I think when George walks on, in the opening, he already knows he's got to kill this creature before the story is over."

Lenny has no sense of responsibility.

"I want to give little flashes of that without losing any of the humor or the endearing quality or the, 'Ah gee, isn't he cute,'" said Jones, explaining his approach. "I don't want to lose any of that, but I want to give the other side of it."

Whatever approach Strathairn takes with his character will work with Lenny because, Jones said, Lenny hasn't a clue.

"When John Steinbeck was still alive, I had a chance to do this play out at Purdue University," Jones said. "I wrote to Steinbeck and said, 'Look, you have one black character in this play called Crooks, right? Now if I play Lenny, and I'm black, what rewriting would you do?'"

Jones said Steinbeck reply was: "'Rewriting? Lenny doesn't know what nigger means.' And it's true, he wouldn't know what the hell they're talking about."

Jones and Strathairn have worked together before in the films Sneakers and Matewan.

"And we hope to work again, too," Strathairn said with a smile.

"David's a very particular actor, and having worked with him before helps," said Jones, dressed in the blue denim shirt and bib overalls he's selected for the role.

"But he's playing George now," Jones continued, slipping into the character of Lenny. "I have to find out to what extent is he on to 'me.' Lenny's aware that he's a killer, but he can't say the word... Lenny knows that his hands kill, but he doesn't know why.

"Suddenly, things in his hands are dead. That's all he can say. George is aware of all of that. But what I've got to do is play it without any intellectualizing about it or any words for it. To what extent is George going to get fed up with me and just say, 'That's it!'"

Neither actor is taking Saturday's performance lightly. They are professionals working with professionals in front of friends and family.

This is the fourth benefit Jones has done for the school. Last year, he joined Mary Tyler Moore to perform A.J. Gurney's Love Letters at the Bardavon. In 1994, he flew to Poughkeepsie from location in South Africa, read stories at a Halloween performance at the Bardavon and flew back the next day.

Will he miss the day school when his son graduates?

"I know I'll miss him," Buccelli said before Jones could answer.



Actors lend talent to day school
The Poughkeepsie Journal
May 25, 1999
By Cindy Reiman

James Earl Jones practiced at the Poughkeepsie Day School Monday what he preached the previous day at Vassar College. He had told the graduating class to accept civic responsibility.

But Jones, acclaimed for his work in film and television and with solid roots in theater (and don't forget the Bell-Atlantic commercials), prefers not to wallow in what he does in the community.

"I have a real apprehension about phrases like, 'Give back to your community' and 'Family values.' I am very distrustful of those words that are better coming out of mouths of politicians," said Jones, seated with fellow actor and Dutchess County resident David Strathairn in the office of day school director Tony Buccelli.

"I think, and David has said it, too, do the increments that are about you and your relationship to the community and they hopefully will add up," said Jones.

Jones, of Pawling, and Strathairn, of Clinton Corners, have joined forces on an "increment" because they are the parents of day school students. They spent Monday afternoon rehearsing and blocking out a scene from John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, which they will perform outdoors on Saturday night, June 5. It's a benefit for the independent school.

"I'm doing this basically for the school and for my son," Strathairn said. "It's just giving back to the school so they can increase their endowment. And this is fun."

Strathairn has been featured in numerous plays on and off Broadway and is currently commuting to Malvern, Pa., where he's winding up a three-week run in a production. His movie credits include eight films by John Sayles, including the soon-to-be released Limbo. He and Jones have appeared together in the films Sneakers and Matewan.

Establishing local roots

Asked if there was added pressure performing for their day school family, Jones looked to his wife Ceci. They both laughed.

"He will never have a more pressure-packed performance," she said. "The time you flew in from South Africa to do the first benefit the first year we were at this school and nearly fell asleep at the podium trying to get through Ichabod Crane. No, there's no pressure. I just hope the microphones don't electrocute you and David if it rains that night."

Dutchess County has been the actor's home for almost 30 years.

"I come from rural life, both as a child where I was born in Mississippi and when I was raised in Michigan," Jones said. "But when I discovered at age 2 that my son loved the woods and would just take off stumbling over rocks and roots...and then that my wife loved living up here, too--that was it. The place that was used for a lodge where we came for Thanksgiving and Christmas became a home."

What do the actors expect to hear from their sons about their performance?

"I'm not sure what he really thinks. He usually says, 'Oh, that's cool, dad,'," Strathairn said of his 12-year-old.

"Ours never says, 'That's cool, dad,'" Ceci Jones said of her 16-year-old son.

"He will one day, again," said Buccelli, the father of three children, including a 17-year-old son. "Don't worry. You guys will get much smarter in about three or four years."

Buccelli said Jones and Strathairn may be world-class actors, but when they are at the Day School, they are parents.

"When they're here, they are a part of this school, and we really feel they are part of our community," he said.



Play Time: David Strathairn Shuttles Between Stage and Screen, But the Veteran Actor Prefers the Theater--So Much So That He Happily Endured a Hectic Schedule to Star In a Production Opening Here This Week
The Philadelphia Inquirer
April 28, 1999
By Douglas J. Keating

A fair number of people travel from a Philadelphia suburb to a job in New York and back each day, but it's a pretty good bet that few, if any, commute between Philadelphia and New York the way David Strathairn did for the last few weeks.

The actor was shuttling not from home to work but from job to job. In the morning he would travel by train from New York to Malvern and the People's Light & Theatre Company. He would rehearse Sally's Gone, She Left Her Name, by Russell Davis, until late afternoon, then hop a train--sometimes two--to return to New York in time for an 8 p.m. performance of Harold Pinter's Ashes to Ashes at the Roundabout Theatre. When he could, he'd get to his home and family up the Hudson River near Poughkeepsie.

It was a hectic schedule until Ashes to Ashes closed on Sunday and Strathairn was able to devote all his time to Sally's Gone, which opens Friday, but the actor submitted to it willingly. Interviewed during a break in a People's Light rehearsal, he seemed unperturbed by the travel.

"I love both plays," Strathairn said. "Having the chance to do two works like these is a rare opportunity." Besides, he added, "the trains run on time."

If Strathairn's name is familiar, it's more likely you've seen it connected to a movie than a play. Although he's done more stage than film acting in his 25-year-plus career, what public recognition Strathairn has achieved as an actor derives primarily from his work in films.

A college friend of the independent-movie director John Sayles, Strathairn has been in many Sayles movies, beginning with the first, Return of the Secaucus 7, in 1979. He also has appeared in studio-produced movies such as The Firm, The River Wild, and L.A. Confidential, but if you can't place his face in these or such Sayles movies as Eight Men Out, City of Hope, and Passion Fish, it wasn't because you weren't watching closely. In the supporting roles in which he is usually cast, Strathairn's movie performances call attention to the character, not himself.

He is a serious actor who talks about theater in measured, carefully considered sentences. He welcomes roles that challenge him, and he noted that he was taking on two demanding parts at the same time, performing in Ashes to Ashes, by the notoriously arcane Pinter, and rehearsing a play by the lesser-known, more accessible, but to Strathairn still-difficult Davis.

Davis, Strathairn said, works on "a different terrain, much as Pinter does. There's always something apparent outside the membrane of the immediate event on stage... One of the great challenges of doing his work, like Pinter's, is to give breadth to both--what's going on onstage and what he's evoking beyond the play, between illusion and reality--and you're not always sure where the line between them is."

Strathairn's admiration for Davis and his past association with his plays are what brought him to Malvern for the premiere of Sally's Gone. He has participated in staged readings of two other Davis plays, Sally's Porch and Appointment With a Highwire Lady, as well as two readings of Sally's Gone.

The director for those readings, as well as the current production, is Abigail Adams, co-artistic director of People's Light. In 1990, she directed Davis' The Last Good Moment of Lily Baker for her theater and became Davis' director of choice.

Adams said she had wanted to present Sally's Gone since directing the reading of it at People's Light two years ago. She had to wait to mount it because she insisted on having Strathairn and New York-based actress Joyce Cohen in the production, and it wasn't until now that both were available.

Strathairn, she noted, is a perfect actor for Davis' multilevel work. "He's masterful with subtext," she explained. "He is very economical in his acting style, yet there's also a sense of oceans of feeling and thought under the surface, and that's what Russell's plays need."

The four characters of Sally's Gone, She Left Her Name are members of a middle-class suburban family at a turning point. Seventeen-year-old Sally (People's Light company member Elizabeth Webster) is an aspiring artist about to go off to college; her mother, Cynthia (Cohen), has suffered a serious injury and as a result is looking differently at her life; head-of-the-house Henry (Strathairn) senses his hold on the family loosening to the point that he feels out of place in his own home; 14-year-old Christopher (Mark Del Guzzo of the People's Light young ensemble) senses the family on the brink of dissolution and imagines himself becoming a movie star and saving it.

"You could say it's about a family's falling apart, but that would be a sad, tragic take on the play," Strathairn said. Rather, he added, "it's about what happens when people begin to change in their lives... They're all on this precipice, and it's really quite wonderful how it affects them."

Raised in San Francisco, the son of a physician, Strathairn, 49, had his first brush with theater when he came east to attend Williams College, in northwest Massachusetts. He acted in college productions, he said in a typically self-effacing remark, not because of any driving urge to perform, but because "the theater had a lot of power tools to play with, it was open all night, and there were girls there." (Women, he explained, were rare at Williams, which was an all-male school until his junior year.)

Strathairn's first gig as a professional performer wasn't on the stage but under the Big Top. After graduating, he went to Florida with a friend who had enrolled in the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus Clown College. Strathairn ended up taking the six-week course himself, then spent a year with the circus as a bottom-of-the-ladder clown, which he described as "a sort of stagehand in costume."

After his stint with the circus, Strathairn and some friends started a troupe to present theater in New England schools. In the summer, he performed with the Eastern Slope Playhouse at North Conway in New Hampshire's White Mountains and gradually began to regard acting as his career.

At Strathairn's suggestion, Sayles, whom he befriended at Williams, came to New Hampshire to direct some plays. Sayles had written a couple of film scripts, and after the 1979 summer season, he recruited Strathairn and other actors from the theater troupe to act in Return of the Secaucus 7, Sayles' debut as a director. Shot around North Conway for a reported $60,000, the highly praised film established Sayles in the movie business. It also helped put Strathairn briefly on Broadway.

"I played a local-yokel gas station attendant in Secaucus 7, and I got a job directly from that playing a gas station attendant in a New England town in a play called Einstein and the Polar Bear," he recalled. "It played Hartford Stage, then went to New York--for four days."

Strathairn has moved between stage and film ever since. He said he would rather work in an independent movie--he has shot a half-dozen with Sayles, including his latest, Limbo, due out this summer--than a more lucrative studio enterprise, but he prefers the theater to either. Over the last few years he has been having a good run in New York theater, acting in noteworthy productions of The Three Sisters, Tom Stoppard's Hapgood, and the premiere of Sam Shepard's Eyes for Consuela, in addition to his critically praised performance in Ashes to Ashes.

"In film acting," Strathairn said, "you're doing a phrase of the total sonata--a piece here and a piece there. You have to carry the whole thing in your head and hope that you're leaving ends that the director and film editors can attach logically.

"In the theater, you do the whole thing at once. You work it and work it at rehearsal, then do it each night. There's a completeness to the process that is very satisfying."



Fresh Look At Custer Legend: New TV miniseries tries for a 'balanced and accurate' view
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
February 3, 1991
By Patricia Limerick

[ Excerpt from article: ]

And the battle starts.

The Indians are in the grass in the low ground; the cavalrymen are trying to form a line where the hill starts to r ise. The guns sound like cap pistols. But then, as the Indians steadily advance, as the soldiers retreat, as Army horses lose their riders and retreat in a panic (and there is no Method actor as good as a panicked horse), the watcher's detachment begins to erode.

The soldiers are defending the hillside where caterers, production company staffers, friends and observers are clustered, and they are obviously not doing a very good job.

For a minute and a half, all one's carefully cultivated cultural relativism--the stock in trade of the professional Western American historian--goes on leave. Sure, it was an invasion; sure, the Indians are legitimately defending their homeland--but the white folks are losing, and they had better do whatever it takes to start winning, and save our hillside and us.

War between whites and Indians was only one part of the struggle in 1876. A quieter, but nearly as savage version of psychological warfare went on within the ranks of the Army.

With deep jealousies and resentments dividing the officers, Custer's Seventh Cavalry was a regiment with a nightmarish staffing plan. The two men who disliked Custer most bitterly were Sgt. Marcus Reno and Capt. Frederick Benteen. Benteen had tried repeatedly to temper Custer's impulsiveness and had been as often rebuffed.

Ask [Evan] Connell whom he would be if he were going to play a character in this miniseries, and there is no hesitation. "Benteen," says the taciturn author. "I like Benteen."

On June 4, 1990, on another site near Billings, the Custers are having a party at Fort Abraham Lincoln, just before the regiment departs for the fated 1876 campaign; Benteen and Reno are grudging guests.

On a festive table, potato salad, cooked carrots, tomatoes and corn, pickles, apples and roasted meat sit for hours in bright sunlight. The regiment, it seems likely, is on the edge of an early last stand via food poisoning.

Couples dance and, in the manner of the 19th-century West, some of the couples are made up of two officers, one officer wearing a white handkerchief on his sleeve to signify temporary status as a lady.

The Custers are dancing with considerable charm and intensity, his golden hair flying while at the edge of the dancing zone.

While the dancing is filmed over and over, and the dancers remain relentlessly festive, the actors playing Benteen and Reno do a magnificent job of maintaining stances of continuous contempt. David Strathairn acknowledges that he has made no effort to make Benteen a sympathetic character. "He was cantankerous, gruff, rude, frustrated," Strathairn says. "But he did make one decision that saved some people's lives."

On June 25, 1876, at the Little Bighorn, Benteen held back. Eventually besieged on a hill, Benteen and most of his men stayed alive.

"Benteen was a bitter, mean, vindictive, wise and foresighted man," Connell says. "He was my favorite."

There is one thing clear in Montana in June 1990: Benteen bears close watching. Without him, inevitability governs the story: the Civil War ends, Custer heads West toward his last stand.

"This," Connell says, "was a disaster that a lot of people sensed was about to happen. But they couldn't stop the machinery."